Belittling Chinese military presence

By Modesto P. Sa-onoy

Last week’s report in a national daily cited a senior military official downplaying Lacson’s claim, saying it is more likely that only 300 People’s Liberation Army and Chinese intelligence operatives are in the country. This is ten percent of what Lacson estimated. Military intelligence has not come out with any statement except to say the expected – we will investigate.

“Only 300” spies in our country means little to this senior official. Would this unnamed official be worrying and working if there were 400? In fact, should not even ten spies merit attention? If China is a friend as it declared, why should China send spies here at all? One does not spy on a friend. Only enemies spy on each other.

The source also described Lacson’s report as an exaggeration and that while he doesn’t know the senator’s source, any country that undertakes foreign intelligence operations doesn’t deploy so many operatives. Wait a minute! If 300 is small and 3,000 is too much, how many spies should there be? China has over a billion people and its military is runs into millions. This means that China has more spies than any other country in this world and sending 3,000 to “immerse” with the people in the intended object of invasion is not too much but in fact too little. The Chinese of military age coming here could be on training mission but whether on training or not, any information they collect and send back to China has military and political value.

He added if China wanted to obtain information from other countries, it could always use cyber warfare which has less risk of exposure than deploying an army of agents. Cyber warfare has its limits the reason that the Chinese spies needed to “immerse” with the subject.

This official also claimed that “PLA troops are not trained to conduct foreign intelligence operations, much less deploy huge number of agents to a third country.” Has this Philippine military official personal knowledge of this policy? Every armed force train even its buck privates on intelligence gathering and they were probably here for that purpose.

He also claims that “China has the Ministry of State Security that specializes in foreign intelligence and espionage, though some of its agents have been recruited from the PLA.” Well said, but a country like China with an obsession for spying even on its own people and military force “to protect the state” cannot escape the temptation of spying on a country like the Philippines where senior military officers have loose tongues. China does not need a specialist to know for instance, that senior military officials of the Philippines cannot read indications and have no ideas about possibilities, only hard facts.

It should be a given that there are already Chinese intelligence operatives by the hundreds deployed in the Philippines. I have cited on several columns what the Japanese did prior to the outbreak of World War II. Nothing had change except we have a new country with territorial ambitions in the Philippines. In fact, the Japanese did not only “immersed” with the population, they married some Filipino women and raised families here. In that way, they were never suspected as spies. In relation to China their immersion here would be less conspicuous because there are millions of Filipinos married to Chinese nationals and of Chinese origin. They need not take cover because of the openness of the Filipinos to the Chinese.

More so, there are Chinese here who have their loyalties to communist China and who travel to China for many reasons. In this sense, perhaps China need not send thousands of intelligence operatives because they can always recruit from among Filipinos of Chinese descent.

Here’s another catch. This alleged senior Philippine military official claim that because we have better relations with China, that country will “not risk invading the country with little strategic gain.”

That is a China line. So why was China already encroaching on Philippine islands in the West Philippine Sea?  When has the Philippine straddling on the sea routes of the Pacific and with millions of hectares of arable lands, wide swaths of fishing grounds, and millions of tons of mineral and gas deposits lost its strategic value that is not worth invading this country?

Is this military official on China’s payroll that he belittles China as threat?